The flu spread from Camp Pike in North Little Rock to Fort Smith and the rest of the state. The Arkansas Board of Health put the state under quarantine in October 1918, and officials shut down all public schools. Children under the age of 18 were confined to their homes into December.

The epidemic continued to kill Arkansans through 1919, eventually taking at least 7,000 lives.

These photos and newspaper clippings show daily life in Arkansas from 1918 to 1920, as the flu, World War I, and new technology forever changed the state.

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Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Flu patients at the Eberts Field medical facility near Lonoke

Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Nurses at the Great Southern Fraternal Hospital in Little Rock, which opened in 1919.

The Arkansas Democrat reported on the outbreak of the flu in Arkansas. This page from February 9, 1920 contrasts the flu situations in Fort Smith and Fayetteville.